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The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 3: The Pakistani Strategy

Released on 2012-10-19 08:00 GMT

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The Afghanistan Campaign, Part 3: The Pakistani Strategy

March 17, 2010 | 2039 GMT
Afghanistan Campaign display
Summary

Pakistan is central to the U.S. war in Afghanistan - and Islamabad views
Kabul*s fate as central to its own. No other country is as pivotal to
Afghanistan*s long-term fate as Pakistan is, and in this part of our
series we examine the country*s long historical relationship with the
Taliban and its strategy and objectives going forward.

Editor*s Note: This is part three in a three-part series on the three
key players in the Afghanistan campaign.

Analysis
PDF Version
* Click here to download a PDF of this report
Special Series
* The Afghanistan Campaign
Related Links
* Obama's Plan and the Key Battleground
* The Taliban in Afghanistan: An Assessment
* Afghanistan: The Nature of the Insurgency
* Afghanistan: A Pakistani Role in the U.S. Strategy for the Taliban
* Now for the Hard Part: From Iraq to Afghanistan
Related Special Topic Page
* The War in Afghanistan

The Pakistani strategy of securing influence in Afghanistan is dictated
by the unalterable reality of geography. With a long common border, a
strong Pashtun population on both sides and active militant groups
interconnected with each other across the border, Pakistan is forced to
take an active role in Afghanistan. It's the same sort of geopolitical
imperative that bound the colonial British to the region, and before
them the Muslim emperors, and before the Muslim emperors the Hindu
rulers.

Pakistan's core is comprised of the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, which
encompass the country's demographic, industrial, commercial and
agricultural base. From Punjab in the north, this heartland extends
southward through Sindh province, flowing seamlessly along the Indus
River valley into the Thar Desert. This means Pakistan's core is hard by
the Indian border, leaving no meaningful terrain barriers to invasion.
(Indeed, the Punjabi population straddles the Indian-Pakistani border
much as the Pashtun population straddles the Pakistani-Afghan border).
This narrow strip of flat land is inherently vulnerable to India,
Pakistan's arch-rival to the east, a geographic arrangement that was no
accident of the British partition.

Hence, suffering from both geographic and demographic disadvantages
vis-a-vis India - and with no strategic depth to speak of - Pakistan is
extremely anxious about its security in the east and is forced to look
in the opposite direction both out of concern for its depth and in
search of opportunity.

Geographic features of Pakistan

West of the Punjabi-Sindhi core lay the peripheral territories of the
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Federally Administered Tribal Areas
(FATA) and Balochistan province. Though the Pakistani buffer territories
of the NWFP and FATA are far more interlinked with Afghanistan than with
Pakistan by virtue of the common Pashtun populations, they do provide
Pakistan with some of the depth it lacks to the east and also protect
against encroachment from the northwest. Having firm control of its own
heartland and secure access to the sea through the port of Karachi,
Islamabad must also control these buffer territories as a means of
further consolidating security in the Punjabi-Sindhi core.

In this effort, Afghanistan is both part of the problem and part of the
solution. It is part of the problem because the Islamist insurgency that
Islamabad once supported in Afghanistan has now spilled backwards onto
Pakistani soil; it is part of the solution because Afghanistan remains a
critical geopolitical arena for Islamabad. By securing itself as the
single most dominant player in Afghanistan, Pakistan strengthens its
hand in its own peripheral territories and ensures that no other foreign
power - India is the immediate concern here - ever gains a foothold in
Kabul. If India did, it would have Pakistan more or less surrounded.
Indeed, the need to assert influence in Afghanistan is hardwired into
Pakistan's geopolitical makeup.

Afghanistan already was an issue for Pakistan when the Soviets invaded
Afghanistan in the final days of 1979. A secular Marxist government was
in Kabul supported by arch-rival India and bent on eradicating the
influence of religion (a powerful and important aspect of Pakistani
influence in Afghanistan). When the Soviets invaded, Pakistan used Saudi
money and U.S. arms to back a seven-party Islamist alliance. In the
civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan threw its
support behind the much more hard-line Islamist Taliban and gave it the
training and tools it needed to rise up and eventually take control of
most of the country. Though Afghanistan was still chaotic, it was the
kind of Islamist chaos that the Pakistanis could manage - that is, until
Sept. 11, 2001, and the American invasion to topple the Taliban regime
for providing sanctuary to al Qaeda.

Thus ensued an almost impossible tightrope walk by the government of
then-President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan was forced to abruptly
end support for the Taliban regime it had helped put into power and
around which its strategy for retaining influence in Afghanistan
revolved. Islamabad tried to play both sides, retaining contact with the
Taliban but also providing the United States with intelligence that
helped U.S. forces hunt the Taliban. This engendered distrust on both
sides in the process. The Taliban realized that they could not depend on
or trust Pakistan as they once did, and from 2003 to 2006, American
pressure on Islamabad to crack down on al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal
areas directly contributed to the rise of the Pakistani Taliban.

So as the Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan spilled backwards into
Pakistan, the cross-border Taliban phenomenon began to include groups
focused on the destruction of the Pakistani state. To this day, however,
despite the inextricably linked nature of these Pashtun Islamists, there
is still an inclination within many quarters in Islamabad to distinguish
between the "good" Taliban, who have their sights set on Afghanistan and
ultimately Kabul (and with whom Pakistan retains significant, if
reduced, influence), and the "bad" Taliban, who have become fixated on
the regime in Islamabad and have perpetrated attacks against Pakistani
targets. There also are other, non-Pashtun renegade Islamist elements
that have carried out major attacks beyond Pakistani borders that have
risked provoking Indian aggression, such as the militant attack in
Mumbai in 2008.

Nevertheless, Pakistan has realized that the militant problem in
Afghanistan has endangered the weak control it does have over the buffer
territories of the FATA and NWFP and is applying military force to the
problem on its side of the border. It also appears to be working closer
with the United States in terms of sharing intelligence. Across the
border in Afghanistan, Pakistan does not want to see the Taliban stage
too strong a comeback because of the offshoots of the movement that are
becoming problematic on Pakistan's own turf.

Strategy

But the Afghan Taliban can neither be ignored nor destroyed. They still
have utility for Islamabad and must be dealt with. This will require
skillful handling on the part of the Pakistanis, who have lost a lot of
leverage over the group. Islamabad's strategy is to try and balance a
domestic policy that seeks to militarily neutralize Taliban rebels on
the Pakistani side of the border while working with the Taliban on the
Afghan side to achieve its foreign policy aims. Pakistan's intelligence
service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, can provide
devastating intelligence on the Taliban movement to the Americans,
giving Islamabad leverage over Washington. And its long-standing
connections to the group put Islamabad in a unique position to
facilitate and oversee any negotiated settlement.

So Pakistan is seeking to maximize its influence within the Afghan
Taliban movement, gain control and ownership over any negotiation
efforts and establish international recognition as the single most
important player in Afghanistan. The West's interest in withdrawing from
Afghanistan puts Pakistan in a good position to succeed here. The
Americans know Pakistan must be part of the solution and are anxious for
Islamabad to provide that solution.

But to succeed, Pakistan must again walk the middle ground between the
United States and the Taliban. And once it is at the center of the
negotiations, it must not only push both parties toward each other, it
must also pull them in a third direction in order to satisfy its own
aims - namely, to establish long-term conditions for Pakistani
domination over Afghanistan.

And to succeed in this effort, Pakistan will need more than just the
Taliban. It must establish influence with the other key players in
Afghanistan - particularly the government of President Hamid Karzai, who
recently acknowledged that Islamabad will have a great deal of influence
in the country but that he wishes to place limits on it as much as
possible. And this is where things get tricky. The United States may
ultimately have no choice but to work with Pakistan in attempting to
secure a negotiated settlement with reconcilable elements of the
Taliban. But Karzai is also seeking a deal with the Taliban, and if he
can achieve one outside of Pakistan's influence, he can try and minimize
Pakistani influence in the negotiations (though Pakistan can no more be
cut out of the negotiations than could the Taliban).

Related Links
* Countries in Crisis: Pakistan
* Part 1: The Perils of Using Islamism to Protect the Core
* Part 2: A Crisis in Indian-Pakistani Relations
* Part 3: Making It on Its Own

At the same time, Islamabad must find common ground with other regional
players - Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - in order to roll back Indian
influence in Afghanistan (there even appears to be an emerging axis of
sorts consisting of the Americans, the Saudis and the Turks). But
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited New Delhi March 11 in
order to coordinate and craft a common strategy for Afghanistan - a
strategy being formulated between two countries that share a common
interest in Afghanistan that runs counter to Pakistan's and is coming
closer to aligning with Iran's.

In sum, Pakistan retains more levers in Afghanistan than any other
single country, and with Saudi money and American might it is
maneuvering to be the pivotal player in a powerful coalition with
abundant resources. But Pakistan will continue to face challenges as it
tries to distinguish between and divide the Taliban phenomena in
Afghanistan and within its own borders.

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